The Easy-Bake Oven: magic, not gourmet
May 07, 2009 By: almostgotit Category: American Girls, Easy-Bake Oven, Mr. Hoffman, NPR, The Easy-Bake Oven Gourmet, Uncategorized, books, cooking, feminism, recipes, review
It honestly didn’t occur to me until yesterday afternoon that there might be some connection between my love for Aga stoves and my earlier obsession with Easy-Bake Ovens.
Wow, and I call myself a feminist…
“Easy Bake Oven: Teaching girls their place since 1963″
Image: Ebaumsworld.com
I never did get an Easy-Bake Oven, no matter how much I begged for one. My exasperated mother told me I could just use the REGULAR oven if I wanted so desperately to bake something.
My mother just didn’t understand.
The clever artifice of the Easy-Bake Oven was an essential part of its charm for me: by the heat of an ordinary light bulb, one could produce a wonderful variety of cakes, cookies and pies, each a perfect miniature of the real thing. And actually edible, to boot!
The Easy-Bake oven was like a doll’s house come to life.
Nor am I the only person, nor even a member of the only sex, to suffer from an unrequited love for an Easy Bake Oven:
I cannot begin to tell you of the psychic agony of being a “sensitive” male child in the 60s (well maybe not sensitive just plain oddball) wanting and not being able to enunciate the X-Mas Love that Dare Not Speak Its Name: the EZ Bake Oven.
Five years ago, in celebration of the Easy-Bake Oven’s 40th anniversary, NPR ran a story featuring The Easy-Bake Oven Gourmet, a combination cookbook and retrospective written by David Hoffman.
With all due respect, Mr. Hoffman and NPR don’t understand, either.
Educational? Gourmet? Wild mushroom flan?
No, no, and GOOD HEAVENS no.
Easy-Bake Ovens, guys, are all about magic, Christmas, and multi-colored sugar sprinkles:
I’m 43 and I’ve just fulfilled a dream. As of a couple of weeks ago, I am the proud owner of an Easy-Bake Oven … Today, I pulled it out of my “tickle trunk” (bedroom closet) and showed it to my 4 year old nephew and informed him that we were going to bake Christmas cookies. His eyes lit up, and our day quickly shot up to a 10 on the excitement scale … I had my mini copper Christmas cookie cutters (which up until this point, had only been used with the playdough I made them — recipe off the ‘net) and sprinkles at the ready much to their delight. …Three batches later, I put the brakes on them eating anymore as their Dad would soon be here to pick them up and take them home for supper… Tomorrow for lunch, we’re going to try out the pizza recipe I found for Easy-Bake Ovens. The 4 year old is bringing some different sparkles from home for tomorrow’s afternoon session of Christmas cookie baking. Thanks for the memories Easy-Bake! Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night…
-Nadene, comment on beancounters.blogs.com
O, Sing It, Sister.
May 7th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
I can tell you right now, an Easy-Bake Oven is a helluva lot cheaper than an Aga.
May 7th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
My sister wanted an Easy-Bake Oven, which she did get. The only thing I recall her producing was a one layer cake from an included mix. I wasn’t impressed–perhaps I was too old by the time The Oven appeared on the market.
If you still want one, I will hunt far and wide….well, online anyway. But sorry, no Aga. But I will grieve for you that you did not get E.B. John never got a Verti-Bird, either, just a plaid shirt.
May 7th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
Many thanks, Kathy, but I suspect I’d just be terribly disappointed…
May 7th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
The mixes were terrible. But I remember liking the idea that I could eat “a whole cake” by myself. And the fact that you could create a sort of assembly line–pushing one cake in forced the done cake to the cooling station. I get what you mean by the magic of it.
I loved my sister’s Easy-Bake almost as much as she did, but not as much as my Creepy Crawler set. You poured colored liquid into metal molds of spiders, scorpions and the like and then you heated the molds on a cooker, really just an electric hotplate, to make great looking plastic bugs. It would never pass the toy safety laws of today! I sold my creatures for 5 cents each to my friends, the really cool big ones for a quarter.
My friends and I used the cooker to sizzle all sorts of things!
May 7th, 2009 at 9:39 pm
You poor abused child…NO Easy Bake Oven! Can you imagine the hoopla we would have today if there was a toy on the market with an exposed 100 watt light bulb? Sigh…makes me miss lead paint toys too. Ah yes, the good old days when we were allowed to discover all on our own that touching a hot light bulb resulted in a blister. Don’t know about you but I was a fast learner!
May 8th, 2009 at 8:32 pm
Mmmmm, cake ……
May 8th, 2009 at 11:36 pm
Somebody I knew had one of those bug maker things. Now, if I could only remember who…..
Age does have it’s disadvantages.